Joran unceremoniously dropped Moros in front of Alaric.

  The wounded elder grunted in pain, swallowing back a scream as Joran smiled and turned his gaze to the lord, whose full attention was on the battle unfolding in the distance.

  Healing attendants had immediately converged around Moros, healing Ethra burning its slow way through the elder's system.

  Undeath Ethra was a disaster to deal with, unless you were Tunde. Joran was only now beginning to appreciate just how significant that fact was.

  He glanced at Moros, wondering what the elder had witnessed of the relic's capabilities during the fight.

  Only a fool would assume Tunde hadn't used it. Not after what he had just survived, and not even with the gauntlets Borus had provided.

  It was obvious the artificer had quietly hedged his bets on his student dying, not that Joran could tell Tunde that.

  And anyone with eyes would covet a relic like that, especially with the way Borus had described it as something verging on apocalyptic.

  Still, the signs scattered across the battlefield told clearly of a man who had relied on his fists and resonance above all else, and Joran couldn't ask for more than that.

  "You have so much faith in your student," Alaric said, arms folded.

  Joran could feel the gazes of the assembled adepts drawn toward the distant battle that was about to begin. He smiled inwardly.

  Good. Let them see exactly what he was sculpting.

  "He lives or he dies," Joran replied as Tunde shot toward the monster, resonance burning in his hands.

  He sincerely hoped the boy had something more than resonance in mind, given how quickly it burned through both his endurance and his Ethra reserves. The lord nodded.

  "As is the way of the cultivator. Still, the presence of the revenants throws the matter of Tunde's supposed herald accomplice into an entirely new light," Alaric said.

  "Immediate execution of the supposed herald?" Joran asked curiously.

  Alaric frowned.

  "Had he still been within our territory, I might have considered that option," he replied.

  "Ah. The clan moved ahead with that plan then?" Joran said.

  "The surge is a week or two away. All indications point to the Acacia clan working with the Mountain Sects to hold that convergence point," Alaric said.

  "It still doesn't make sense. So far from their borders, the Mountain Sects risk a great deal for whatever power they're seeking," Joran said, frowning.

  "A new tier 4 rift sitting within that convergence zone. You understand what that means, don't you?" Alaric said, turning to Joran.

  "Limitless lords, at least for a time. Insane to consider," Joran replied.

  "Weakened lords after the first reaping, but lords all the same. We lose our hold on the Mountain Sects if that happens," Alaric said.

  "Besides, we have word that the last-born daughter of the high lord himself will be obtaining her second affinity there as well," he added.

  "Peak adept already? How time flies," Joran said with a low whistle.

  "Indeed. Now you understand why the clan cannot afford infighting at this point. Whoever enters the rift first has a stable foundation toward lord rank, but we can still draw one or two lord advancements from the rift before we're forced to withdraw its core," Alaric explained.

  "Naturally, the opportunity should go to either Celia or Jashed, but the nature of your conflict with Moros here complicates things," Alaric said, glancing briefly at the elder who stared at Joran with undisguised venom.

  No doubt, being carried wounded from the battlefield and deposited in front of the assembled adepts and a lord by Joran himself bit at him deeply.

  Joran could always drop him back if needed.

  "However, I have decided in favor of the clan as a whole. Celia would sooner take the hard path by choice, and Lirien would fall on her own spear before she allowed her son to claim those resources without first proving himself as one of the strongest adepts in the clan," Alaric said.

  "Meaning taking one of the three great adept positions," Joran completed as Alaric nodded.

  A team of disciples had recovered Isolde and Draven from the rubble. The one-eyed girl looked away from Joran in shame.

  Draven was unconscious and being carried between two men. Joran frowned. They hadn't been the companions Tunde needed for a mission like this, that much was clear, but they could still serve their new house well.

  He would speak with them later. For now, there were more pressing matters.

  ****

  Tunde dodged and struck with precision, moving clear each time the creature attacked, the area around them filling steadily with both rift energy and undeath Ethra.

  The utilization of rift energy was apparently not unique to him. Either way, the creature's pure speed and raw strength had nearly cost him his head more than once.

  He was on the defensive, his body imbued to the absolute limit as he worked to absorb the rift energy fused with the undeath Ethra in the air without poisoning himself in the process.

  Sweat ran freely down him. The Necroshade roared, its eyes blazing as it detached its tail and held it like a spear before coming at him.

  Tunde shifted one leg back and stared it down, cocking his fist, raw resonance swirling in its starry black bands around his arm before he released the attack.

  The explosion rang out around them. Dust filled the air, and the floor shattered beneath them. Tunde stumbled backward, flicked his hand gently to relieve the strain, and stared at the core embedded in the creature's chest.

  Everything that held unimaginable poison and taint to others was, to him, nothing but a boost waiting to be claimed. All he had to do was take it before his body overloaded with undeath Ethra or the creature tore him apart.

  He drank another Ethra elixir, replenishing his reserves, and prepared himself for what amounted to a suicidal attack.

  The creature kept healing as fast as he could shatter it, his Ethra not yet dense enough to rival the potency of an adept. He had one choice.

  Taking a deep breath, he began cycling Ethra as fast as he could produce it, spreading it across every inch of his body simultaneously as he shot toward another section of the room, the creature thundering after him.

  Mindless projected undeath Ethra raged through the air around them as he dodged, keeping his cycling unbroken, buying time for the miracle or the madness he was about to commit.

  *****

  Joran ignored the quiet chuckling of Moros behind him and kept his focus on Tunde, a frown settling on his face.

  "You might want to go save your student, Joran," Moros said.

  "A Necroshade is no creature for a disciple to face alone," Alaric said, glancing at Rhyn, who nodded.

  "Wait," Joran said.

  Alaric turned to him, lips pressed together.

  "I would not waste a talent you've invested considerable resources in, clan resources or not, for the sake of bragging rights with Lirien. If he wants to die, let him die during the surge, not here," Alaric said.

  "You wanted to see the best of what I could produce. I don't believe he's simply running," Joran said, turning to Alaric.

  "Explain," the lord said.

  "He's about to do something completely stupid. So stupid that even I'm fairly certain it will leave him broken," Joran said with a smile.

  "And why are you smiling?" Alaric asked, irritation creeping into his voice, no doubt already weighing whether to end the whole affair.

  "Because he is beginning to understand exactly what a ranker must be willing to sacrifice to climb to the next stage," Joran replied.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  ****

  Tunde's body hummed with unspent power. His muscles strained to contain it, his bones so dense they had cut his speed by half. He pushed on regardless.

  "Not yet. Soon. Not yet," he thought.

  He was close to the limit his body could hold. His heart pounded with raw Ethra, his sight blazing from the reservoir of power at its edge.

  Yet he dodged and fought on. Every cut, every bone-scraping gash, every burst of agony he absorbed, he channeled into his body, burning with the raw Ethra of a peak disciple that he was not.

  When his body shuddered for what he knew was the last time it could take, Tunde twisted in the air with a shout tearing from his lungs, fist cocked. Vengeance burned bright with his starry Ethra, its surface glowing, a direct reflection of his own form blazing with everything within him.

  His heart strained again at the threshold. The Necroshade rose to meet him, its form burning equally bright, undeath and rift energy warping together into a trembling mass of power within its frame that threatened to consume them both.

  They clashed. Tunde poured his entire strength, everything that remained within him, into that single blow. He chose to believe.

  He chose to believe it was not truly a tier 3 creature, but a tier 2 raised to a perceived level by false means, that what stood before him was nothing more than a rabid thing dredged up from whatever unholy place had birthed it.

  He felt the barrier between their powers attempt to crush him in its vice-like grip. His eyes burned.

  Tunde pushed, and kept pushing even as it burned him, his skin shriveling and healing in rapid succession, resonance tearing through both his form and the creature's at once, Vengeance squealing as its metal began to warp from the sheer heat of the exchange.

  He raged, letting his Ethra drink deep of his fury. There was nothing else, only him and the creature. Green eyes of madness against starry black eyes of pure determination.

  What came next was an explosion unlike anything that had come before. The ground caved in beneath them, the earth shattering as Tunde drove his burnt, gauntlet-covered hands through the crumbling ribs of the Necroshade and closed his fingers around the core. The creature's death scream shrieked through the air.

  ****

  "Joran," Alaric called.

  The elder nodded and stepped forward. As the explosion tore through the air toward them, Joran released his projection technique, a bubble of sound and vibration Ethra fused at the basest level, repelling the waves of force rolling across the field. Dust swallowed the area.

  The lord, adepts, and disciples stared in absolute silence. Even the initiates aboard the distant ships had gone still, whispering among themselves. Joran chuckled softly, feeling all eyes drift to him before returning to the settling clouds of dust.

  Alaric unfolded his hands and began making his way back toward the ship in quiet contemplation. The adepts stared at what was gradually being revealed through the clearing haze.

  Moros found no words. Rhyn's hand had found his blade reflexively before he realized it and released the hilt with a sharp exhale.

  *****

  Tunde gripped the core and raised it as high as he could manage.

  His body was riddled with bone shards from the Necroshade's explosion. He swayed once before steadying himself, breathing in ragged pulls, his legs threatening to fold.

  His sight was already going dim at the edges. He let out one last scream of victory toward the darkening sky, the winds picking up from the south and carrying the smell of rain.

  Then his knees hit the ground, the void ring swallowing the core as he shuddered. Hands caught him from beneath. He turned his gaze to the blindfolded eyes of Elder Joran.

  "Told you that you could do it," the elder said.

  Tunde managed a weak chuckle before the darkness took him.

  ****

  Thalas Verdan, grandson of Lirien Verdan, the Merciless Spear of Clan Verdan, knelt before the doors of the lord's home in silence, eyes lowered, his father beside him.

  They had been in that position for over an hour, neither daring to move, not when they could feel the presence of the Spear herself within her abode.

  Her adept-ranked servant sat with closed eyes and folded arms within his voluminous robes, his back to the door, as motionless as carved stone.

  It was common for certain rankers to remove themselves from the hierarchy of the clan's cultivators, choosing to develop their affinities in peace and observe from outside the usual order.

  Old man Bo was one such ranker.

  He had remained comfortably at adept rank for as long as Thalas could remember, one of the clan's hidden powers at that level, unknown to most and lurking in perpetual silence, his entire existence dedicated to the protection of Lady Lord Lirien from lesser disturbances.

  He was the kind of ranker Thalas understood would be afforded the honor of advancement whenever he chose it, but who took it as a mark of dishonor to do so while his mistress remained a lord.

  The moment she broke through to Highlord, old man Bo would become a lord of terrible strength, his adept rank having been solidified a century ago. Thalas shivered as he felt the old man open his eyes.

  "She rouses, young Jashed," he said softly, his voice betraying nothing of his more than two centuries of age.

  Thalas had always found it odd, the patience the rankers of old possessed, their unhurried accumulation of resources long past what they needed, advancing only when they judged themselves truly ready.

  He had no patience for such an approach. Every day he waited, Rhyn widened the gap between them, ensuring his cousin was always a step ahead.

  The arrival of the wastelanders hadn't made things simpler, especially for the girl. Adept rank already, and with an affinity that carried a sub-affinity within it.

  The metal Ethra user was a force entirely unto herself.

  Word was she was quietly accumulating resources for a lord breakthrough, and even now, Thalas wasn't confident he could face her without first understanding the full extent of what she could do, something she had wisely kept concealed.

  So many variables.

  At least the other wastelander had been sent on a suicidal mission to the mines. He wasn't one to underestimate opponents, his father having drilled that lesson into him young, but he couldn't claim to be particularly eager about facing Tunde.

  The man fought like a possessed creature, striking with movements so irregular that it had taken Thalas several seconds to predict his next move, and this was against an early-tiered disciple.

  If his father had been watching from the rift, Thalas might have been ashamed of how long it had taken him.

  And there had been something strange about the wastelander's body, a solidity to it that felt more like a peak-tiered disciple's frame than an early one, though the force of his blows had told a different story.

  "She speaks," old man Bo said, drawing Thalas back.

  He felt the pressure of the lord's aura and steadied himself inwardly. It gave off the feeling of bloodshed, the weight of countless lives lost to her in battle having permanently stained her presence.

  Thalas couldn't help but wonder whether all lords' auras felt this way, saturated with the weight of those they had killed on their rise, or whether the lady was simply a rare case.

  Then her voice came through the doors, soft and unhurried, from a room rumored to be lined with the weapons of her defeated enemies.

  Thalas had no idea if that was true. He had never been inside the building, and whenever his father emerged from those doors, he always looked like a man whose willpower had been stretched to its limit and left to recover on its own.

  "The wastelander succeeded in his mission," the voice of the lord said.

  Thalas went still. He inhaled slowly and exhaled, letting the news settle within him like a leaf touching a still pond. He could not say the same for his father.

  The crack of Jashed's knuckles as he clenched his fists was audible from where Thalas knelt. He sighed inwardly.

  Whatever grievances his father carried toward Elder Joran and the wastelander were not his concern.

  He had larger ambitions than any single disciple, even one who had admittedly proven rather determined to stay alive.

  Too bad he had to die.

  Thalas was no fool, and no idiot either. It was obvious that Rhyn was looking to recruit the disciple into his growing collection of allies, all in service of the same goal Thalas was also pursuing, the founding of his own house.

  The tenth house position had been empty for some time, and it had been a genuine surprise to him that Elder Joran had not only claimed that coveted slot but had placed the disciple as the house's public face.

  If that had not been a wake-up call, nothing would be.

  The fact that the clan's adepts and both its lords had wordlessly approved, reluctantly as that approval may have been, told Thalas everything he needed to know.

  Tunde had gone from an insignificant existence to one whose presence within the clan now rivaled his own.

  The news that he had returned from the wastelands alive only added a rising caution to what had already been forming in the back of his mind. The disciple he had faced in the rift would not be the one walking back through those tunnels.

  "This means I will be fulfilling my oath, granting Joran and his new house the right to bear my name," she continued.

  The words settled over the compound like a cold mist. Old Man Bo's expression shifted briefly, the subtle change of a man who had swallowed something unpleasant.

  Thalas watched his father break protocol for the first time in his entire memory, rising to his feet, his aura bleeding unchecked from him.

  "Your name?" Jashed said, his voice a furious whisper.

  "Mother, you would allow some wasteland swine the honor of wielding your name?" he continued.

  Old man Bo's gaze moved to Jashed. The adept's aura spread outward and crushed Jashed's like a man swatting a fly, sending him crashing back to his knees.

  For the first time, Thalas saw clearly the advantage of solidifying one's advancement over a long period.

  What he had just felt from the old man carried the weight of an early lord, and he hadn't even been its target. He swallowed quietly and recited his mantra of calmness, aware that the lady was still observing them.

  His father had the luxury of being her son. A son could be permitted moments of misconduct. Thalas was merely the grandson, more or less a weapon to be wielded, and one that was dangerously close to being measured against a replacement.

  "Thalas Verdan," her voice came again.

  He pressed his forehead to the ground.

  "I listen with my life to the words of the lord," he replied clearly.

  "You have been challenged by a stray beast. One whose will to survive exceeds the mere ambition for advancement," she began.

  "Stray beasts know no fear and no regard for their own lives. But we are Clan Verdan. We rose from the madness of the wastelands by taming stray beasts. Do you understand my words, Thalas?" she continued.

  "As clear as the path of advancement," he replied.

  "From this moment to the day of the duel, you will receive no help from me or from the clan. You will train without assistance. You carry the name Verdan on your shoulders, and should you lose, Thalas Verdan," she said, pausing.

  He shut his eyes. He knew what was coming. It was a favored punishment of Lady Lirien's.

  "You will serve under the wastelander until I say otherwise. You will forfeit the name Verdan for the duration of that period. But if you win," she said, and he heard the faint trace of something almost like amusement in her voice.

  Thalas could picture the gleam in her eyes, the lord who had always lived for duels like this, where rankers placed everything they had on the line with no safety to catch them. He raised his head, a smear of dirt across his forehead, and spoke.

  "From the mouth of the lord, to my heart," he responded.

  Her presence and aura vanished as quickly as they had come. Old man, Bo spoke into the quiet that followed.

  "You may leave."

  Thalas was on his feet before his father could draw breath to speak. He gathered his robes and walked for the compound's large gates, the words of anger and disappointment he had heard from his father his entire life already forming somewhere behind him.

  He couldn't care less.

  He had just been handed another boulder to carry on a road already lined with them. Irritation warred briefly with his cultivated sense of calm as he ignored his father's calls entirely, already drafting a mental list of everything he would need.

  Elixirs, pills, food, training tools, all of it catalogued and ordered as he stepped into the waiting metallic vessel outside. The doors sealed behind him, the interior dimming to a quiet dark. He closed his eyes and breathed.

  The lord was right. The clan had climbed from blood and ruin, from the ashes of enemies laid low across the wastelands, to become the wardens of the empire itself. He was a scion of that bloodline, shaped by it from birth.

  Tunde might be a boulder. But Thalas had been crushing boulders since before he could remember. Stray beasts were brutal and relentless; that much was undeniable.

  But even stray beasts knew better than to approach a predator.